The Failure of Fáilte Ireland

Elements among the Irish population are obviously of the opinion that as long as they can follow and understand certain things - regardless how unusual, complicated or weird they might be - everyone else will be able to do so, too.

This opinion is especially prevalent in the offices of various organisations in Dublin, and rarely do they make an effort to see things from anywhere further away than Dun Laoghaire (a nearby suburb on the Irish Sea).

Such attitude leads - to give just one prominent example - to the fact that Ireland's national tourism development authority, whose purpose is to attract new and more foreign visitors to the country, is named Fáilte Ireland. The word fáilte is Irish (Gaelic) and means 'welcome'. But how many foreigners, who of course do not speak any Irish, know this?

Despite being the republic's first official language and as such compulsory for the pupils in every school, Irish is even in Ireland used only by a tiny minority of people, most of which live in very remote parts on the west coast. Apart from a handful of specialist academics, no-one outside the island even knows of Irish and assumes that the national language is English. Which, in fact, is the case.

So when foreigners, most of whom do speak English, see the name Fáilte Ireland, they try to understand it through English. The nearest word they will come-up with in English is 'fail', and at that stage they usually give up on the matter.

In my humble opinion it is an absolutely daft idea to use a language no-one abroad understands or speaks to promote a nation's tourism. And the results, especially from last year and this year, speak for themselves. There is a drastic drop in tourist numbers in Ireland. As today is August 31st - traditionally seen as 'the last day of summer' - it is appropriate to draw a little balance.

The reasons for the drop in tourists are manifold, and not entirely linked to the enigmatic name of the agency. It is quite obvious that the extremely low value of the US Dollar has a major effect. In the past it was quite affordable - and at times even cheap - for Americans to come for a holiday in Ireland.
Not anymore. With the US Dollar at the lowest exchange rate to our Euro any European holiday is now an expensive luxury for US citizens.

The fact that Ireland is also one of the most expensive countries in Europe, with extra rip-off for tourists who don't know any better and have not much of a choice once they are here, Ireland's tourism industry has entered a state of self-destruction. According to statistics a third of all hotel beds in the country were permanently empty, even during the main season. But nevertheless it did not occur to our hoteliers that by reducing their prices they might actually get more people in and make more money. Logic, as it happens, is not one of the strongest traits of the Irish...

While the US Dollar is extremely low, Britain's Pound Sterling has also fallen quite significantly in relation to the Euro. This reduces the influx of tourists from the UK, who were traditionally still the main group of visitors to Ireland.

Combine that with bad service in the hospitality industry, extremely high prices for - at best - mediocre accommodation and often quite simple food (unless one goes to one of the hyper-posh food temples in Dublin where they charge easily a week's wages for one fancy meal) and you will have the reasons why less and less people coming to visit Ireland. The bad weather, which gave us totally washed-out summers for two years in a row now, does not help either, of course.

Fáilte Ireland, despite expensive analysis of the situation, has not developed new ideas. They still concentrate their main efforts on the UK and - most of all - the American market. Little to no ideas have been put into place to attract new visitors from the European continent or even from further afield, such as the now increasingly wealthy countries of Asia.

So perhaps the national tourism development authority carries her name rightfully. But I would suggest to make a small adjustment to the spelling and call it Fail thee, Ireland.

Or, perhaps Brian Lenihan, our new Minister for Finance, who is at present desperately seeking ways of saving government money in order to survive the recession we are in, could go a step further. He might as well close down the national tourism development authority, as it does nothing the name suggests, except fail. Nor deserves it any further public money just to produce ever more failure.

All hotels and tourist attractions have their own advertisement, promotional material and - by now - their own websites anyway. So what is the point in having a public body doing exactly the same, except that they are not really doing anything but sending out material with a misleading name on it to countries who don't understand it. Be sensible, Brian, and save us a lot of money!

The Emerald Islander


P.S. Looking at it from a purely linguistic point of view, the name does not even make sense as a statement. What it says is "Welcome Ireland", which would make sense if one would greet the Irish nation arriving somewhere abroad. (With concessions one could also use it to welcome the Irish national team of any sport - including our Olympic team - at any place, including in this case in Ireland.)
"Welcome Ireland" does not address any foreigners. If we would want to do that, it would need to be "Welcome to Ireland". I do wonder how many owners of empty brains in Fáilte Ireland take home a full pay cheque every week, the money for which comes out of taxpayers' pockets...

A Poet in Hiding and in Denial

For the past two weeks, ever since RTÉ television showed the documentary film "Fairytale of Kathmandu" (on March 11th), many people on the Emerald Isle are loudly discussing the life - and especially the sex life - of Cathal Ó Searcaigh (photo), a 51-year-old poet from County Donegal who writes exclusively in the Irish language.

From what I hear and read about him, he appears to be a quite gifted wordsmith, probably even following in the footsteps of the ancient bards of this island. But since I am not a great enthusiast of Us Gaelge (the Irish language), I had never before even heard of the man. (I should mention that I am an avid reader of all sorts of books, including poetry.)

But here lays the problem. Since Cathal Ó Searcaigh only writes in Irish, access to his work is very limited. Of the ca. four million people living in the Republic of Ireland, perhaps 1% are fluent speakers and readers of Irish, and the number of those among them who read poetry must be minimal.

All this despite the fact that every child in the Republic is forced to learn the language in school. That means for most pupils 13 long years of compulsory Irish, from the begin of infant school to the leaving certificate at the end of secondary education.
Very few speak Irish at home or with their peers, so the whole exercise - which began as a purely political gesture in 1922 - is pretty useless and futile, costing millions of taxpayers' money every year with hardly anything to show for.

To make things even worse, there is not just "Irish". Each of our four provinces (Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster) has its own version of the language with differences in spelling and pronunciation. As Cathal Ó Searcaigh comes from County Donegal, his Irish is of the Ulster variety, the least common version in today's Ireland. This explains why he was completely unknown to me, and to many others as well, I am sure.

The sudden prominence he has achieved throughout the country has however nothing to do with his poetry. Cathal Ó Searcaigh is the subject of discussion because he is homosexual and strongly attracted to "young men" (some would call them boys).
As this might not be anyone else's business, it entered the public realm when the now well-known documentary "Fairytale of Kathmandu" revealed a side of Cathal that was previously known only to very few people.

Besides being a poet who won several prices and is a member of Aosdána (an elite group of artists - limited to 250 members - which is Ireland's version of the Académie française) Cathal Ó Searcaigh organised a private foreign aid programme in Nepal, a country "he fell in love with" and visited many times. He spent some of his own money on the project, but received also large sums of money from public funds and private donations in support of his work in Nepal.

The documentary "Fairytale of Kathmandu" began as a film that was to show how one man could make a difference in this world, a homage to an Irish poet who went half around the world to help poor people in an Asian third-world country. But during the filming, which happened with Cathal's full knowledge and agreement, the female director discovered a different angle to the poet's activity. It appears that the Nepali people receiving help from the Irish bard were mostly very young men (some say boys), who also spent regularly the night with him.

Given the fact that Nepal, a predominantly Hindu country high in the Himalayas, has a very traditional society in which sex is an extremely private matter between married people (and open homosexuality is unknown), this shed an entirely new light on the frequent visits Cathal Ó Searcaigh made to the Nepalese capital Kathmandu.

Since the film was shown on television, Cathal Ó Searcaigh has gone into hiding and no one seems to know his whereabouts. There are many people in Ireland who are absolutely appalled by his actions and call him a sexual predator who used his position and money for his own personal sexual gratification. But there are also some voices - mostly from fellow artists - who say that he was "set up" and has apparently done nothing wrong.

This position was taken yesterday by the man himself, in an hour-long interview he gave to Raidió na Gaeltachta, RTÉ's Irish language station. I did not hear it, but even if I had, I would not have been able to follow the conversation. Raidió na Gaeltachta is a minority programme exclusively in Irish, with - at best - perhaps 20,000 listeners a day. However, excerpts of the interview were also broadcast with English translation on RTÉ Radio 1.

The argument for speaking only in Irish was that he wanted to talk "to his people" in particular. Never mind what the remaining 99% of the nation think. As long as the few plain Irish speakers know what Cathal Ó Searcaigh has to say, that's alright then. This alone shows the enormous arrogance of a man who seems to think very highly of himself, and thus believes he can do as he pleases and can do no wrong.

But he did not leave it at that. He felt it necessary to invoke the spirit of Oscar Wilde, implying that all the criticism he faces for his predatory behaviour in Nepal was more or less nothing than "homophobia". But, as Wilde wrote, "some of us look up to the stars" even though we are all in the gutter... And he, of course, is one of those few stargazers, he believes.

Now, I am a very tolerant man and try to live without prejudice. For the past two weeks I have refrained from saying or writing anything about Cathal Ó Searcaigh, because I neither know him nor his work, and there are much more important things and people in this country to analyse and write about.
But the statement he made yesterday about himself and Oscar Wilde made me join the debate.

I don't care if he is homosexual or not, and I cannot comment on his poems, as I am unable to read them. But I am immensely annoyed when I encounter hypocrisy and double standards. If Cathal Ó Searcaigh were heterosexual (as the vast majority of people) and had slept with Nepali girls aged 16 or 17, he would be branded a "pedophile" and the full force of the Law would come down on him. (Men have been sent to jail for a lot less, even for nothing more than looking at pictures of young girls.)

But obviously there is one law for most of us, and another for homosexuals, who like to call themselves "gay" these days by hijacking a perfectly normal word that means jolly or joyful.
(For example, the well-known operetta "The Gay Hussar" is not about a homosexual in the Cavalry. Quite the opposite!)

Until recently this country was blighted by homosexual priests who abused young boys in their care for many years. Now there are homosexuals in almost every walk of life and profession, and many of them behave as if they were a new kind of priesthood, superior to the rest of us and entitled to do whatever they desire. And whenever anyone says a critical word about them, they immediately cry "homophobia".

I am a psychologist and have no phobias. And I am not afraid of anything, and especially not of homosexuals. But I am not fond of them either. That is my good and proper right. No one can be forced to like everyone and everything. We all make our choices. This does not mean that I discriminate against homosexuals or wish them any harm. Before the Law everyone should be equal. But this is exactly the problem. After centuries of discrimination and even criminalisation of homosexuality the pendulum is now swinging far in the opposite direction and homosexuals have become virtually untouchable by criticism and the Law.

Being not only homosexual, but also a member of the prestigous Aosdána and a dedicated Irish-speaking poet, makes Cathal Ó Searcaigh - at least in his own opinion - almost untouchable. The Law, he seems to believe, is for the rest of us, the "great unwashed" who speak and write English and do not reside in the illustrious temple of Irish high arts. So he has nothing to feel sorry about, did nothing wrong, and does not even bother to explain himself to the vast majority of the nation in a language that everyone can understand. Some prick, my father would have said, if nothing else.

Well, I am no judge or lawyer, and I do not condemn anyone. But one thing is clear: Cathal Ó Searcaigh is in hiding and in denial. The whole affair around him and his unusual sex life, as well as its current aftermath, leave a visible stain on the Irish state, its arts establishment and the image of the nation. For me personally it also leaves a very bad taste, to say the least.

As I mentioned above, until two weeks ago I had never even heard his name, despite my regular involvement with literature and the arts. Perhaps he is just another of those highly over-rated artists who live in a world of their own, which cannot be accessed by normal people. In Cathal Ó Searcaigh's case the language barrier does most of that already, and - quite honestly - I am personally glad about that.

Knowing what is now known of the man and his behaviour, I have no time for anything he writes, no matter if it has won him prizes and honours or not. And if I were still in school and would be forced to read and study his poems for the leaving certificate in Irish, I would refuse to work with those texts. If that means that I would fail my Irish exams, so be it.
Who speaks Irish anyway after leaving school?

The Emerald Islander

British People are denied a Lisbon Referendum

Calls for a British Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty have increased over the past couple of weeks.
Despite the UK government's clear refusal to even entertain the idea, and the defeat of a Conservative motion - calling for a referendum on the new treaty - in the British House of Commons, the voices from outside parliament demanding a direct say in the matter are getting louder.

Even though the governing Labour Party promised voters a referendum on the European Constitution in their last general election manifesto, Prime Minister Gordon Brown (left) and his ministers now argue that the Lisbon Treaty is "an entirely new document" which has apparently nothing to do with the Constitution that was rejected in referenda in France and the Netherlands in 2005 (thus saving the UK from holding their own referendum, as any new EU Treaty needs to be accepted by all member states).

On the opposition benches the views on the Lisbon Treaty are divided. The Conservative Party has been calling and arguing for a referendum since the document was signed by all EU leaders in the Portuguese capital last December. Several nationalist and independent MPs also support the call for a British referendum.

Surprisingly, the Liberal Democrats are split over the issue. While the party leader Nick Clegg (right) asked his 63 MPs not to vote on the Conservative motion and abstain, only 50 followed their young leader. 13 LibDem MPs defied the order and voted with the Conservatives. Three of them - Alistair Carmichael, Tim Farron and David Heath - even resigned as front-bench spokesmen so they could vote in favour of the motion. This is no mean feat, and it only shows how deep the emotions over the Lisbon Treaty go in Britain as well. In a later, separate vote on a referendum, proposed by Labour MP Ian Davidson, 14 LibDems rebelled and in total 15 of their MPs ignored the call to abstain.

Many observers see this as the first test of the leadership qualities of Nick Clegg, who was elected as his party's new leader less than three months ago. He has his own agenda on Europe and wants a wider referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union or not.

Despite so many opposition calls for a referendum - also strongly supported by the Euro-skeptic UK Independence Party (UKIP), which has no MPs but 12 MEPs - the people of Britain will not have their say on the matter after all. Despite the support from the rebel Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives' motion for a referendum was defeated by 311 votes to 248. By the time British voters can react to this open defiance of a public demand - the next general election - the matter will be dead and buried and the treaty will be long in effect, unless the people of Ireland vote NO. The Irish are indeed the only force left that could yet stop the EU juggernaut.

In a separate development, a privately organised opinion poll in ten marginal constituencies in the South of England asked voters if they were in favour of a referendum and how they would vote if there were one.
88% of those asked declared that they were in favour of a referendum, but once again the British government decided to ignore them. Perhaps the reason for that is the result to the second questions asked: 72.4% of those asked in the ten selected constituencies said they would reject the Lisbon Treaty.

It is probably not a completely representative poll, but it shows clearly a double tendency in Britain: People want more active and personal participation in major political decisions, and they are growing more Euro-skeptic almost by the day.
Sadly, the British political system only pretends to be democratic, while it is not. So the Irish will indeed be the only people who can make a difference in the matter and show the politicians at home and in Europe that democracy still means "government of the people".

The Emerald Islander